If I see another woebegone think piece about the horrors of "internet shaming" I'm going to spew burrito chunks. They are all just so saccharine, and can be summed up in a handful of buzzwords each. Not only are these articles tedious in their moralistic cluck-clucking, they spend very little time trying to root out the real source of the problem. Internet shaming isn't just a product of "the internet age", and it isn't just a case of mob mentality or immaturity. It's a symptom of a deeper underlying problem: a problem with our culture that needs to be fixed before we can expect internet shaming to get better.READ MORE>>

Privacy is an illusion. It simply doesn't exist. You probably don't believe me. Until recently, it was easy for us to have the illusion of privacy. Now, with accelerating increases in computational power and storage, and the incredible sophistication of data mining and machine learning, that fake veil of "privacy" is about to be torn down--and it will be shown to have been nothing more than a mirage in the first place. But that doesn't mean you should freak out. It also doesn't mean that we should just ignore the legal concerns that people associate with "privacy" in our society today. All it means is that we need to re-frame these problems in a different way.READ MORE>>

For the last few years, conservatives in various states have been pushing to have monuments to the 10 Commandments erected on state property. The standard line is that it isn't a "religious symbol" but rather is a tribute to the influence that the 10 Commandments have had, culturally, on our laws and legal system. But if we take that argument seriously, we have to consider: were the 10 Commandments REALLY the very beginning of these traditions? As it turns out, there is a legal system much older that, when you do the math, is even more strongly related than the 10 Commandments is to the laws we have today.READ MORE>>

My latest chit-chat interview is with journalist and author Allum Bokhari about corporate censorship. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and other social media platforms have so much power, and such a wide audience, that if they decide to ban a politician or public figure from using their services they effectively cripple that person's ability to communicate and get their message out. Should that be allowed? If a public figure is unpopular, is that a good enough reason to effectively censor him by taking away his access to an audience?READ MORE>>

I am a transhumanist: I really believe that eventually our technology will advance to the point where we are able to replace the biological parts of our brains and bodies with mechanical or artificial replicas, or will be able to "upload" our minds into machine bodies. But if humanity transitions to synthetic, non-biological bodies... what will that mean for sex and gender? What will it mean for sexual orientation? Do terms like "homosexual" and "heterosexual" even have meaning when our bodies are made of nanobots or plastic and wires?READ MORE>>

Elon musk was a co-founder of PayPal, is the CEO of both electric-car manufacturer Tesla Motors and the spacecraft company SpaceX, and he is chairman of SolarCity. He's trying to make zero-emission electric cars widely available, launch spacecraft into orbit, invent the perfect battery, and create an effective solar-powered energy grid. These are incredibly broad "infrastructure-level" initiatives. Rather than throwing his power and money into inventing a gadget with his name on it that will appear in people's homes, he is building the services that eventually all of the gadgets you use will completely and utterly rely on. And you will look back at the fact that he used your tax money to do it, and you will thank him for it.READ MORE>>

Invoking the label "structural sexism" is kind of like using The Force in Star Wars: it can be done for good, or it can be done for evil. It has a light side and a dark side. And a lot of people don't really understand what it means, and end up dismissing it or abusing it. This is going to be an attempt to clarify what the label "structural sexism" actually means, and give some examples of good applications of the term as well as some examples of ways the term can be horribly abused.READ MORE>>

Some of the other things I do include reading, fiction writing, drawing, making videos, traveling, working, playing… you know, the usual. Scroll down and you can see some of my creative work in the sidebar below.

Subscribe if you want to get email updates. Feel free to get me a present if you are inclined. And thanks for visiting!